Just a Moment's Carelessness

I will, in future, never attempt to fill out the service register until I have removed my vestments. This Sunday I managed to spatter myself with Registrar's Ink, entirely unbeknown to me, and probably by merely removing the lid from the pen. By the time I did notice it was too late to do anything about it: nothing much makes an impact on Registrar's Ink, that's the point of the stuff.

This is the Green Set I bought while I was at Goremead, so I've had it a dozen years. Thankfully the ink hit the orphrey down the front of the chasuble, and I still have some of the fabric left even after all that time, so I replace it. But there are always more useful things one can do with one's time ...

That Great Absence

Albert Camus's 1947 novel The Plague has apparently become a best-seller during lockdown. The adaptation on Radio 4 yesterday, itself a version of Neil Bartlett's 2017 stage play, was rather good, I thought. Bartlett updates the narrative, set in an Algerian French town, to make the character of Dr Rieux a black woman (and therefore a lesbian as she refers to her wife throughout), and another of the main characters black. This makes the story more diverse and engaging, and less tethered to its setting, which is barely relevant. 

I can't speak for the original play, but the radio version also does something else: it disposes completely of one of the other central characters, the town's priest, Fr Paneloux. Paneloux believes that the plague is a divinely-ordained scourge and a test of faith, and in Camus's novel he functions to bring up a set of issues around belief and purpose. Camus had little time for Christianity and Fr Paneloux isn't a sympathetic figure, so his absence from the updated version of The Plague is no great loss to Christian apologetics. But it also means that there is no religious discourse in the drama, and if it was produced 'under lockdown conditions' because it was felt to speak to the times, this must mean those who put it together didn't feel that religion has anything meaningful to add, even so it can be exposed as false. Not even its errors are relevant anymore.

It's yet another example of how modern intellectuals and opinion-formers have no interest in religion, or don't feel equipped to deal with it when it crops up in an older narrative. It's so remote from modern experience that they feel their audience won't understand it, they lack the apparatus to explain it, and nothing it has to say is felt to be important anyway. It's the one great element of the past whose links with the present have withered to nothing. 

And yet curiously elements of Christian narrative keep recurring in hard times, even when they're not genuine. The Church of England recently published a theological paper (a rara avis in itself, having nothing to do with homosexuality) entitled Crisis, Scarcity and Christian Ethics - a short note for chaplains which is very worthwhile overall. But it includes an intriguing mention of one Fr Guiseppe Berardelli, a Lombard victim of the epidemic, who is supposed to have given up his respirator in hospital so that a young person from the town could use it, and died a few days later. After his funeral service in Bergamo a longstanding friend of the priest's claimed that this story was untrue: Berardelli simply couldn't wear the respirator, and refused to accept it, rather than deliberately giving it up to another person. The news of the fake news hasn't got to the Church of England yet.

Part of us, then, still expects priests to be self-sacrificing, to exemplify the very best of what we aspire to be. I am moved that this desire persists, despite all the Church has done to hurt and damage the people who have trusted in it. It shows, perhaps, that it still bears the stamp of divine love. Perhaps, armed with this generous expectation on their part, we might be able to persuade our fellow, non-Christian human beings that such an idea is still worth thinking about.

And the World Will be Done

Next to the church of St Levan in west Cornwall is a huge geological erratic boulder, split in two by some colossal force; if you believe the folklore, by St Levan striking it with his staff. The rhyme goes:

When with panniers astride
A packhorse can ride
Through Saint Levan's Stone
The world will be done

And, so the legend goes, on nights when the storms rage above the Penwith Peninsula the Devil comes and pulls the stone a little farther apart. Why he should want to do this when it means his inevitable final defeat, who knows, but then although the Devil is shrewd he has fundamentally got the wrong end of the stick, and is sadly misled about his chances.

The other day, feeling entirely unable to do anything other than read a bit, I took down off my shelves Essays Catholic and Radical, which, elderly though it is - it was jointly compiled by Archbishop Rowan Williams when he was but a slip of a college tutor, and when giants such as Fr Ken Leech and Fr Gresham Kirby still bestrode the land - I had never dipped into. 

To my surprise there is an essay included, by the aforesaid Gresham Kirby, entitled 'Kingdom Come: the Catholic Faith and Millennial Hopes'. Now this last year I have been grappling to bring together two impulses that I find warring within my outlook: a reformist instinct and an apocalyptic conviction. I want things to get better, for human beings (all human beings, so far as it can be arranged) to lead fuller and richer and happier lives, and for the lovely things that I have enjoyed so far in my life to continue, and for others to enjoy them too. Yet, at the same time, I am part of a faith which looks towards a cataclysmic upheaval ushering in the Kingdom, the everlasting reign of God, which presumes, at the very least, a sense of division, the final separation of good and evil, and that will not be an easy process. So I want someone to help me through this. 

Sadly Fr Kirby does not. Although his essay begins with a thorough castigation of the Catholic Movement for its Platonism and idealism, its neglect of eschatology, it turns out to be promoting another version of reformist Christianity, just a more radical and left-wing one than envisaged by the majority of the bench of bishops. The giveaway comes when he discusses the Ascension, dismissing any idea of Jesus's earthly return as 'a misreading of the symbols' - without even bothering to mention the statement the angels make to the disciples in Acts that 'you will see him return in the same way as you saw him depart'. I am far from ever arguing that the Scripture needs to be taken literally, but it does need to be taken in some way, and not just ignored because it doesn't fit.

What I think I am moving towards is the idea that the apocalyptic motion involves our efforts to reform the current order - that discovering the effects of our economic life on the planet, or the deep embedding of racial hierarchy and the legacy of Empire, or the things we may do or fail to do as a result of the pandemic, are themselves steps along the way towards the final crisis. It is not that we will be either passively waiting for Christ to return and doing nothing, or making the world so Godly and perfected that he will then return, or even that human effort at building the Kingdom is what the parousia means, and so that is the Apocalypse; but that our discoveries are an inescapable part of it - inescapable, because this trajectory is the will of God. It isn't the Devil who pulls apart the Stone of St Levan every storm-racked night: led by the Holy Spirit, it's us.

Peril in the Pond

It's hard enough to photograph any of the fish in the pond, but here you at least have three of them at feeding time. The pale fish is usually a bit slower to join in than the other three. That is the only one that was actually spawned in the pond, and the sole survivor of my previous cohort of fish: I had no idea it was there until cleaning the pond out after about 18 months of inactivity after the outdoor power supply had to be turned off. Eventually I thought there should be another one, and they got on all right so a couple of weeks ago I bought another two. All four seem to hang around perfectly happily together although the orange one you can see here can get a bit competitive at feeding time. It's nice to have four again, and they are quite active. 

The other day I went outside to do some watering and found the pond almost empty! There was a few inches of water in the bottom and the fish bemusedly making their way about in it. Even the frog had surfaced. Filling it back up, the level of water remained steady (I was very nervous overnight in case it emptied again) and it dropped once more when I tried turning the pump back on, so there's a leak in the filtration system: better than it being in the pond lining. In fact, even with the pump on, I realised the pond would never empty completely as the pump is raised and once the water drops below it, it can't go any lower. 

I have a recurring unpleasant dream about having to rescue fish and other small creatures from a leaking water tank, and the leaky pond was much too close to that for comfort. Lady Arlen thinks I should have a cat and she is not the only one, as far too many of my friends are feline enthusiasts. Not only can't I abide the creatures, but anything higher up the evolutionary ladder than a goldfish would just be too much responsibility.

The Horsleys - St Martin's and St Mary's

My first outing on the train for four months was a week last Thursday. It was odd sitting in my mask and hearing the repeated announcements telling me 'Space on our services is extremely limited. Find other methods of transport if you possibly can' when there was no other soul in sight. Mind you, early afternoon on a Thursday is never the busiest of times. 

My aim was to visit the church at East Horsley which I knew would be open and which I had been told had been, once upon a time, a stronghold of the Catholic Movement in wild Surrey. Nowadays it is more middle-of-the-road, but you can still see the signs. As is often the case, a Victorian rebuilding affected most of the fabric apart from the tower, but in East Horsley's case it was a rebuilding carried out by Henry Woodyer, the Tractarian gentleman architect we have already met at Dorking, Hascombe and Grafham. The main elaboration that reveals his hand is the sumptuous tilework around the altar, and the extremely Eucharistic mottoes therein. This will all have been paid for by the Earl of Lovelace who built the extraordinary 'Victorian Disneyland' of Horsley Towers not far away - and who married Lord Bryon's daughter Ada, the mathematician and collaborator of Charles Babbage. 

There are no church history leaflets about at the moment, thanks to the Virus, so I don't know when the aumbry was introduced, but its existing form clearly owes its existence to some previous incumbent with a very Baroque taste. Is it an antique looted from the Continent, or a modern creation by someone like Martin Travers?

I suspect there used to be a Lady Chapel at East Horsley, which will have been swept away in the development of a new parish room which adjoins the nave. At least that's how I interpret the somewhat overpowering statues of the Virgin and Child and accompanying musician angels which now occupy one wall of the room. 

So much for East Horsley. Walking along the road to West Horsley was a gamble but by sheer good fortune I met the churchwardens who were debating how a forthcoming funeral was going to be accommodated, and they let me look around quickly. West Horsley has preserved its past better than East, and has medieval wall paintings, an old chancel screen, and a selection of huge 17th- and 18th-century tombs. There is not much Anglo-Catholicism on show, though, even given the restrictions attendant on Covid-19. There is an icon by the makeshift prayer station, and that's about it. 

However, the churchwardens were very keen that I take note of a roundel of glass that had been inserted into the restored east window in the 19th century, and as I looked I became convinced that it's an image of St Catherine. Her face is missing, but it seems to be the point in the legend where an angel smashes the razored wheels which fly off in bits to slam into the pagans round about the saint. I've never seen a reference to this glass before - 14th century, perhaps? -  so finding it was a bonus within a bonus!

The Eternal Stones

The people who have returned to the church for worship are very glad to be there. Those who have not over the last two Sundays fall into several groups. There are people who feel it's too soon to return to physical worship because it's too soon to be doing anything at the moment, except what's strictly necessary. There are people who can't come because they are looking after an elderly relative they are concerned about. There's a congregation member who said she and her husband are running a business 'forty mortgages are dependent on' and until September at least neither of them can afford to be ill. You can see where they're coming from. 

The most interesting conversation about this was with Tara who came into the church on her own while it was open for prayer and left almost in tears at the mere sight of the furniture spread out for physically-distanced worship. 'I just can't get my head round it', she told me. 

'Church' is supposed to be a point of stability in a life which anything but stable and for some the intrusion of instability into the very place it should least belong hurts too much. It's all very well saying that our sense of permanence, of faith, should rest on God, not on the transient phenomena of churches and stonework and - by extension - our lives that pass so quickly. But the paradox of the Christian life is that we can only experience the eternal for which we yearn by means of the temporal. We all have our own versions.

Swift Exit

Every year in the late Spring, the swifts return to Swanvale Halt, and almost every year one or more finds its way into the church. We don't know quite how, but presumably they get in under the eaves while looking for nesting sites, and find themselves trapped in this echoey space. Usually they spend a while swooping around the aisles, until either they get tired enough to drop to the floor where they can be caught and returned to the outdoors, or, presumably - not though we like to think of it - join what are probably the remains of many others up in the roof beams. More than one has got into the organ pipes, and once I managed to catch one after it had got down the chimney into the old vestry fireplace. 

We've had a swift this week. It's been surprisingly bold, dive-bombing us as we've sat saying Morning Prayer. It makes me wonder how swifts perceive the world, and whether we humans exist to them. Do they register us as other beings or merely as features in a landscape they negotiate at breakneck speed, obstacles to avoid?

Rick the Verger and Rob who helps him from time to time were there yesterday when, on one of its usually fruitless reconnaissance missions, the swift managed to find its way into the church entrance area. They shut the doors behind it and watched as it zoomed out through the main door and into liberty! It's probably the best news I've had all week.

Covering Up

Marion the curate has already begun wearing a face-mask almost everywhere, and with the government's decision to make face-coverings mandatory in shops I expect churches to follow suit - there isn't much clear difference between the arrangements of a church and those of a supermarket, except that churches tend to have higher, pointy roofs. In anticipation, I think my existing black mask is a bit threatening for church use so I am producing a white one, as you can see. Early on in the epidemic I was most impressed by the co-ordinated fuschia ensemble the Ms Caputova, the President of Slovakia, managed to put together. Perhaps she has a presidential sewing machine.

I know the wearing of a mask is practical and rational. For ages I've been unable to fathom out the controversy when it seems patently obvious that having a barrier of any kind at all in front of your mouth and nose has to help reduce the spread of infection. But it doesn't make me feel safer. Exactly the opposite: the sight of other people wearing masks induces in me sensations of anxiety and threat. By doing so we externalise and make very apparent our fear of a hidden vector of death swirling around us - when such things are always, always present. This isn't an argument, it's just a feeling, and no more validity than any feeling does.

New Normal

It was a huge relief to have the first public services for nearly four months over with! There will need to be some refinements carried out but my nightmare vision of elderly churchgoers bumping into one another like dodgems and sending clouds of viral load spiralling into the air to infect everyone around them did not happen at all. Everyone was (as I could have predicted) sensible, restrained and patient. We had music but of course no singing; a register system on the door; and communion in one kind, everything done very carefully, and, so far as we could, swiftly so there was no need to hang around. I got in from saying goodbye to everyone to find that the self-identified cleaning team had already dealt with the seating and surfaces. It's hard to predict whether time will lead to familiarity and confidence, or boredom.

Come One, Come ...Some

The church is ready for us to begin worship again tomorrow - I think. With our completely moveable furniture we are in a much better position than many churches, though whether this is the right configuration isn't definite. Chairs in the middle, benches at the margins, the opposite way round to usual: I think we can seat 60 to 65 souls, depending on how many 'households' can occupy the benches. My main concern was avoiding the absolute need for a booking system, which would be a pain in the neck to administer, and I think with that many positions we can. I suspect our gate will be low: as someone commented to me, the congregation will largely be divided into elderly people who are too scared to come out, and elderly people who can't see what the fuss is about. 

Communion will require a great deal of patience and sense as people will have to line up in the aisle rather than along the step, and you may just be able to glimpse the red crosses on the floor to show where you should stand, as well as the service leaflets on every seat. The main hazard will be people falling over one another but one has to compromise ...

Amazing What You Find

Vera attends the ecumenical prayer group Marion the curate holds on a Monday evening once a month (I say 'attends' because, who knows, it might happen again one day). She and her husband represent a different stream of spirituality from ours - charismatic, with lots of chatty prayers and Bible references. It's what makes that group a useful mix. Earlier in the year Vera said her mother, who does a lot of crafting, had come across some some fabric in a second-hand shop that 'seemed churchy' so she gave it to her. Not knowing what to do with it, Vera passed it on to us. 

When I opened the bag, there was some definitely churchy fabric which might come into play another day,  but also what was obviously a requiem altar frontal. I can't see that the Manormead Church Vera and Terry attend would have much use for it, but we will - probably quite soon.

Everyday Surrealism

This splendid photo, taken by my friend Ms Brightshades back in January when she came to watch over me after my operation, shows the level crossing which dominates a lot of life in Swanvale Halt, as the residents are compelled to wait while a train goes through. Or two. And occasionally three.

I was here this morning on my way down to lock the Steeple House after its few hours serving the spiritual needs of wanderers and passersby (and it had, I had evidence). My eye was cast to the centre-left of this image, just left of the block of flats in the middle. There is a yard here and someone has put up a basketball net. Today the basketball net was being repositioned. The person carrying it seemed undecided as to where it should go, as it moved to and fro several times, no conclusion come to. 

However because of the hedge, that individual, whoever they were, remained unseen. From my point of observation, all that could be seen was the net and board itself, bobbing backwards and forwards seemingly of its own volition. You see what I mean, don't you? I was going to draw the attention of the woman standing near me to it as she might also be intrigued, but then a train went past and, when it had gone, there was no sign of the miraculous basketball net. It was as though it had never happened.

More Garden Arrivals

There is even less to say than I thought there might be but nature seems willing to come to the rescue. In fact the following plants are now all but gone, but they were good while they lasted.

There's nothing exotic about ox-eye daisies, is there, but they're glorious, sunny flowers.

This orchid - of some description - didn't come up last year, I'm sure.

Then we have the regal knapweed:

and the creeping bindweed every gardener hates, but its flowers are so fine:

And the cinnabar moth caterpillars are having a whale of a time on the ragwort:

St Luke's Grayshott

What a pleasure, for the first time in more than 3 months, to be able to go into a church other than the one I look after! I had to go to Haslemere today and on the off chance detoured to Grayshott where St Luke's was open and two ladies welcomed me and pointed out the hand-sanitiser station. Now, you wouldn't describe this church as especially exciting a building: it's an ordinary late-Victorian edifice from 1900, paid for by some of the wealthy families whose big houses scatter the hills of this southwest extremity of Surrey. But it's a rare church that brings no interest.

The first incumbent of Grayshott, Mr Jeakes, appears in a photo in the church wearing an imperial collar and white tie, so he was probably Evangelical in persuasion, and the choir arrangements were fairly standard in churches of all varieties by the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. But in the late 1930s Charles Nicholson, who was usually associated with the Catholic movement, was brought in to do a modest refurbishment which involved installing a restrained carved and coloured reredos behind the altar, and linenfold oak panelling throughout the sanctuary. He also laid down a carpet in his trademark blue - not quite as overpoweringly 'vibrant' in reality as it seems in the photograph!

The church's windows are striking: several contain what are clearly portraits of real people, and there's a grim one showing the sacrifice of Isaac to commemorate an 18-year-old officer who died on the Western Front. Best of all, though, is the glass installed to celebrate the church's centenary:

A second upgrade came in 1961 with a range of windows depicting saints put into the north aisle and a small side chapel created at its east end in memory of Canon Ottley, fourth vicar of Grayshott, who'd died three years before. This is just yearning to be a Lady Chapel, but it hasn't quite got there. The image of the Holy Spirit in the tympanum is in low relief and the artist doesn't seem to be recorded.

In normal times, the liturgical diet at Grayshott majors on the Prayer Book (they even sing Choral Mattins), and you can't describe this as an Anglo-Catholic playground. Instead it shows what a moderate church was and wasn't prepared to do at different times in the 20th century.